Up to You - C204
She probably saw my surprise and smiled and patted me on the shoulder.
“How did you steal it?”
She nodded.
I continued to marvel, and she continued to tell her story.
“Later on, when I succeeded and the Old Owner saw how strong I was, he asked if I was willing to go to He Fang. I had never planned for my future, and I didn’t even know how long I could live. So when I heard Old Owner ask me this question, I only asked one question. ”
“What did you ask?”
“I asked him if he had braised pig’s feet for dinner.”
As Lin Shupei spoke, she couldn’t help but smile, “At that time, the greatest satisfaction would be as long as you could eat your fill. So when Old Owner told me that not only were there pig feet and Red Braised Meat, I agreed without thinking. ”
She stopped talking and stared at a tree in the distance. The air was still, and there were no insects in the surroundings.
The tree was bare, and it looked as if it had been dead for a long time. There was not a single leaf on it, so it was hard to tell what kind of tree it was.
Lin Shupei slowly walked over, and suddenly said: “I grew one in He An’s backyard too.”
I thought of the Hundred Years Old tree in front of Mu Huainan’s courtyard. The roots of the tree were complicated, rooted underground, and intertwined with house beams. It was like a hand grabbing onto the entire courtyard.
He could only remember, but never the name.
Puzzled, I asked, “What’s wrong?”
She slowly shook her head.
“No, I just remembered that a few days ago, I returned to He An City and saw Mu Huainan.”
I remember that day at the dinner with Anfang, she was the woman I peeked at from behind the old tree.
When she mentioned He Fang, she seemed to have restrained her hostility, and a complicated look appeared in her eyes.
“I always thought that the heavens kept me alive because someone had to destroy that Mr. Mou with the words’ ‘above him. Everyone around him was afraid of him, and did not even dare to directly call his name.
Although she and I are both pitiful people now, I still have to remind her.
“You are still no match for him.”
Mu Huainan would never treat anyone as an opponent.
She and I understand that.
“Do you know what my original plan was?” “I was going to kill you and your son. I wanted to see if he’d die without you.”
“Then why did you change your mind?”
“Because when I thought about it later, you all died, so he just had to risk it all and accompany you all.” Lin Shupei said as she looked up at me through the pale moonlight: “Death is too easy for him. The reason why I chose to do that is to give him a chance to die. I want him to live longer, longer, who else can I play with?! ”
I don’t want to talk to her about this. In this world, there are too many people who want to take revenge on Mu Huainan, and my ears are almost full of calluses. But after so many years, I watched as he walked higher and higher.
No one could shake him.
If it’s impossible to do anything about it, it gets annoying to hear her say it, I said wearily, changing the subject.
“You seem to have a different attachment to He Fang.”
She didn’t seem surprised by my keenness, and her eyes began to sink as she spoke.
“He An’s at my place.”
She said, “Before I was picked up by the Old Owner, I never slept for a week in a single place. I was either robbed of my land or the police came to sweep people away, and I lived a life without any help. When I was in the workshop, there was my room, even if it was just a bed, on the table was my chopsticks, and in the courtyard there were flowers and plants that I could see every day. That feeling, for me, is something I’ve never felt before.”
“It makes you feel at home, doesn’t it?”
I felt the same way. After returning from wandering abroad, Mu Huainan picked me up and gave me love and tolerance. He gave me a home.
But now, when he thought of Duan Ling Tian, his heart ached and he was unable to speak.
“I don’t know if that’s what it feels like to be home, but it makes me feel better at last, and I’m not worrying about where I’m going tomorrow.”
“Until one day, Old Owner brought eight more children back from the outside. He told us that of the nine of us, only one would be able to stay at He Fang.”
Speaking to this point, Lin Shupei stopped laughing. She rubbed her nose and heaved a sigh of relief.
“At that time, I only had the thought of chasing them away. I want to be the person left behind at the side of the Owner. It wasn’t easy for me to find a home to return to, and I couldn’t let anyone take it away.”
“So, in your first mission, you went all out and got first place?”
She nodded.
“I never thought that Mu Huainan would also tell this to you?”
“Just a little.”
“That was the first and only time in my life that I defeated him.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Mu Huainan was doing this on purpose. He just didn’t want to act so high-profile.
“Actually, only later did I realize that it wasn’t me who had won at all. It was him who had conceded.”
So it turned out that Lin Shupei was very clear about this as well.
If he wants you to win, you have to win. If he wants you to lose, you will lose your life to him, and he controls everything silently. His eyes look over casually, as if he can dig out your heart and think it through.
As Lin Shupei spoke, she couldn’t help but sigh. “I never believed that such a person would exist in this world, only when I meet him and fall into his hands again and again did I have no choice but to believe in him.”
She turned to look at me. The moonlight was in her eyes, but it was still dim.
“You should know the feeling best.”
“Later, in the second round.”
Lin Shupei started to explain, “You should know that the Owner wanted us to climb up to become nobles, and also had to be related to the political world. I had no choice, and quietly recovered my female body and changed my name to develop in the entertainment circle.
At this point, there wasn’t a trace of sadness in her eyes. It was as if everything she had done for the sake of success was only natural.
“I’ve become one of them. I’ve become one of them. I’ve become one of them. I’ve become one of them. I’ve become one of them.
“Are you not afraid of Owner finding out that you are a girl?”
She shook her head.
“Owner has always disregarded the matters of the entertainment circle. I am just a lukewarm little C-list celebrity, not to mention many people who know me, even if I am with An Fang, it would be impossible for the pretty and flirtatious female star on the stage to be associated with that unassuming little boy on the stage.”
“I just kept on working hard like this, but in the end, even though I climbed up with all my might, I still could not compare to Mu Huainan’s methods.”
“He …”
“He was adopted by a high political official, and his status is as high as the clouds. I simply can’t catch up to him.”
“And then?”
I am a woman without a name, but aside from my face, I don’t have any other way of attracting the attention of others. I found an opportunity to get the high official who adopted Mu Huainan drunk, brought him to a hotel, and took pictures of the evidence of his disagreement. As long as his reputation stinks, he naturally wouldn’t be able to stay in that high of a position.
“Did you succeed?”
Lin Shupei sighed and shook her head.
“Nope.” She said, “Not only did I fail, I even pulled myself into the water.”
“Why is it like this?”
“I took the photo out for a walk, causing a lot of commotion outside. That high ranking official used some kind of method to force the photo to be synthetic, someone purposely framed him, and then even bribed his subordinates to frame me and capture me everywhere.”
At this point, she seemed to be a little tired. She raised her head and looked at the moonlight. She was somewhat dazed, somewhat at a loss.
Finally, he sighed.
“Those of us with weaker powers are no match for those old foxes.”
I could hear the sadness in her voice, and it was the sadness in my heart.
Everything in life became being controlled. When he loved, hated, left, and came back to find him, all of this seemed to happen unexpectedly, but in reality, the other might have considered it a long time ago.
This helplessness after knowing the truth was the most helpless form of grievance.
“I will return to He An Fang as a man. The final winner of the mission will naturally be Mu Huainan, and I will be in second place. After that, Old Owner will arrange for me and the third place member of the mission to live together with him in the Jing’an Garden.
I thought that this was the end of the story. Who knew that it would take a long time before I finally heard Lin Shupei say something profound.
“This is when the tragedy began.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Old Owner has locked me and the third person in the same room in Jing’an Garden. There is a bed, a table, and every day, there is only one person’s food, one person’s water, and everything is shared by one person.”
“He and I can’t get out,” she said. “Every day we try to steal this meal.”
“Can’t we share?” I wondered.
Lin Shupei shook her head. “Children who have grown up with An Fang are not like ordinary children. Since we were young, we have been taught that the strong preys on the weak. If we win, we have the right to everything, so if we lose, we naturally deserve nothing. The loser is not even qualified to pick up the rice that the winner left in the trash can. ”
I can’t imagine what kind of environment it was when children were brought up as warriors of the Arena. They were taught to be lonely from a young age, to kill, and to live in the darkest part of society.
My understanding of their world is basically zero.
If I hadn’t listened to Lin Shupei’s detailed explanation, I wouldn’t even be able to imagine it.
